About midway through “The Christophers,” director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film from a script by his frequent collaborator Ed Solomon, there is a scene where an artist is driven not to create something beautiful, but to destroy it in favor of something ugly.
The artist in question is the aged painter Julian Sklar, played by a witheringly good Ian McKellen, and watching on is his faux assistant Lori, played by the always magnificent Michaela Coel, who comes into his orbit when hired to steal then finish via forgery some of his most iconic yet incomplete works. However, as should be known with any recent Soderbergh film, the initial premise of a familiar caper is only the opening salvo for all that the filmmaker has on his mind about art, integrity and legacy. For Soderbergh, this again feels like a part of his longstanding fight against what he has called the “tyranny of narrative” or the conventions that can box in interesting works.
The hook of a forgery is merely one small sliver of “The Christophers” and, in many regards, the least interesting element. It’s in scenes like the one where we see Julian going from joyously destroying his own unfinished works to realizing that he has actually made something beautiful, almost despite himself, where we feel something more thematically complex bursting free of the conventional constraints most other films collapse under. There are plenty more funny asides and banter throughout the film, though it’s when Julian falls silent that we experience something more resonant.
Shot with a great deal of restraint where we don’t see the results of the sabotage and instead rely on observing McKellen’s shifting expressions reacting to his own handiwork, it works as a thesis statement for what the film is doing. Like the artist he is focusing on, Soderbergh, no matter how scrappy he gets in this prolific stage of his career, is incapable of making an uninteresting film.
While formally different in almost every way from the director’s two other films from this year, horror-tinged “Presence” and spy drama “Black Bag,” “The Christophers” sees him again using what could be a familiar story to get at something all his own (and again serving as his own cinematographer and editor). After beginning with Lori being hired by Julian’s estranged, self-centered heirs (Jessica Gunning and James Corden), it soon settles into being about her spending time with the lonely yet often grating man.
Defined by long takes and handheld camera work, it frequently feels as though we’re merely sitting in the room as the two go back and forth. This is often quite funny, no surprise given Solomon’s knack for comedies like the “Bill & Ted” series.
Just as she did in the all-timer of a series “I May Destroy You,” Coel is able to bring deep layers to her character in even the quietest of moments. Lori is more restrained and observant than many of her past characters, though this only makes some of the eventual insights we get into her past with Julian work that much better.
Some other moments don’t fully work in “The Christophers” when we turn away from McKellen to Corden, a downgrade in acting talent if there ever was one, as the latter feels continually out of his depth. It doesn’t drag everything else down too much as Corden’s character is primarily meant to be a driving force in bringing Julian and Lori together, making his one-note smarminess functional if still flat.
Both Lori and Julian, even when primarily in a confined house, are fascinating characters to build a film around and their distinct dispositions ensure there is a healthy tension to the journey. It isn’t the best or most exciting work Soderbergh has made by any means (this would be a high bar to clear), but it is still one of his most unexpectedly engrossing.
The conclusion, in particular, creates some of the most curious final notes in his cinematic career. It’s a little sweet at first glance, though it also reveals something plenty somber. In the end, this film about artists becomes a work of art in its own right. The more you look at it, the more its many components reveal themselves to you. The characters may cut into the cinematic canvas with a knife, smother it with glue, and just generally wreck it, but they can’t destroy what Soderbergh has achieved.